Before the After Story
by Missy.In.Love
Summary: REDONE AND REVISED. In the past two years, Rikku's cutesy demeanor has died off and is replaced by sarcasm. When she discovers a mortifying secret about herself, will she be able to cope? Or will she need to resort to the only option left? LOTS OF RIPPAL.


**Dudes. I am incredibly sorry. /// I discontinued my other story. I didn't like it or where it was going, so I took some time to collect my thoughts and have to decided to re-write it. I will be changing things, but it will still be generally around the same topic, but slower and more descriptive. I am changing it a lot, so READ IT OVER OR IT WON'T MAKE SENSE.**

**Some parts don't necessarily follow the original story of FFX-2.**

**Rikku's kind of OCish.**

**You'll live.**

**Hopefully it'll be good. :D**

**[START — BEFORE THE AFTER STORY — RIKKU'S POV]**

As i walked down the Mi'Hen Highroad, the soft chirping of crickets invoked a painful feeling in my heart. It was a comical stereotype that crickets were usually heard when there was either an awkward silence or no one around at all.

And I was having both— Being alone and having nothing to talk about, or for the matter, any one to talk to.

After Yuna had become major in the entertainment and political world, and in doing so, her, Gippal, Baralai and Nooj overthrew Spira. Paine and I had kind of sunk in to the background, and honestly weren't recognized much. I was a celebrity among my people, fair enough, but the population of my people were well under 1,000 people. That was about an 10,000th of the total Spiran population. Whoopie.

I sighed as I slumped over a near by rock. I was supposed to be super famous, married and expecting twins by now.

But, alas, my left ring finger still be bare, and me tummy flat.

The comical Rikku I used to be had slipped away from me in these past two years. I had grown up in a form, though I was pretty sure some where inside me, my old demeanor lay dormant.

I rolled lazily on to the ground, trying to make out the glinting specks of light that could only be seen in select locations. Bevelle and Luca were cities— Stars were invisible in their light. Djose was constantly cloudy thanks to all the smoke from Gippal's work. Besaid had the stars, but in Besaid, looking at the sky seemed to pointless when all could be seen in the crystal reflection of the water.

The Moonflow was a good spot to settle down at watch the stars as well, but then the Pyreflies would distract you and you'd forget about the small blinking dots and constellations. Mi'hen was practically the only place you could go and see the stars with out distraction.

I crawled out, grunting in pain as my hand connected with a sharp rock and the soft, tan flesh of my palm became muddled with dirt and blood. I tried to wipe it off. I ended up using one of my sleeves to cover the wound.

I stood up, unwilling to cut my other palm. I scratched my head in my habitual cute fashion, to realize, obviously, no one could see me and admire me. Damn it.

I started kicking my feet forward in a reckless attempt to get where I was headed. Luckily, even in the dark cloud of the night, my feet found the path and continued forward. Hoping to make it to the fork in the road by morning, I'd head to the Faction to greet the inevitable face first.

I needed a job like a Chocobo needed to be yellow. And a Chocobo is nothing unless it is yellow.

I had gone and spent all my gil a month ago when I turned 20 on booze and lottery. Lost the lottery, and woke up in some freako's apartment the next day and had to run across the street half naked to get to the payphone to call someone to come pick me up. I'd would've been killed had Paine not came to save me.

I trudged unhappily down the barren, desolate road. Gippal was honestly the last person I wanted to ask for work. I could see it now.

"Oh Cid's Girl!" I mimicked in the manliest fashion I could. His sarcastic, masculine voice was harder than you may think to imitate. I continued, "You need a job? I thought you were some awesome, Vegnagun destroying machine! You are famous, right? Don't you have a fancy mansion like me and a shit loada gil?" I shook my head as I vomited up some more incoherent responses I could imagine him making, in the most sarcastic voice I could emit.

It's not that I doubted that I'd get employed. Even Gippal wasn't dumb enough to reject a mechanic of my caliber, but he'd give me hell before I got there.

Feeling the cold dew of the grass on my calfs told me that I'd wandered off the path in my blindness. I moaned, and started stomping around melodramatically trying to find the familiar crunchy sound of gravel being pressed tightly to the ground under my foot.

Eventually, I found it, and resumed stalking towards the Faction, my pride falling off in pieces as I neared the fork in the road that would lead me there.

I heard the shriek of tires behind me, and turned around. Multiple lights were visible in the distance, and the pounding music resounded around the highroad annoyingly.

Though I could tell they were hooligans, a ride would be like a God-Send.

As they neared, I sat down. Though I didn't expect them to slow down, I was hoping. I was to tired to actually put an effort in to stopping them, so I hoped looking cute would do it.

They slowed reluctantly about three meters in front of me and one dismounted his bike. Mohawk? Check. Piercings? Check. Cigarette and cheesy leather jacket? Checkie.

"Ohh, baby! You are smokin'." He cooed, kneeling next to me.

"Look, I need t a ride to Djose. Pwetty pweese?" I chewed on my lip, hopeful.

"I scratch your back you scratch mine, eh?" He nodded.

"What do you want?" I asked, my eyes growing wide. Something inside me screamed that his intentions were anything but fair and it was a really bad time to realize I was unarmed.

"Fuck." He said, wiggling an eyebrow.

"....What?" I asked, trying to sound cute and confused, yet I felt like kicking him in the balls.

"You and me. What do you think?" He licked his lips, and I couldn't stop my gag reflex from causing a disgusting noise to emit from the back of my throat. His expression grew irritated, "What was that, babe?" he said through clenched teeth. Clearly being turned down wasn't something this guy wasn't turned down often.

"Reo— Just hit her and take her!" One of his goons yelled.

"Yeah, Reo, she's probably enough for all of us to get some action." Another one cackled.

"Good idea. No one can say no when they can't say anything at all." The man named Reo said, pulling out a police baton from his back, I scampered away, but the lights from their motorcycles revealed my attempts, and man followed in pursuit.

"Good Yevon, I just wanted to hitch a ride!" I shouted, narrowly dodging a heavy blow.

"Yo, Boss, someone's coming!" A female voice said, and in my distraction, his thick metal plated baton connected with my shoulder and I let out a shriek of pain.

I tried to run, but he successfully landed another blow on my rib/upper torso area as my panic levels rose and my breathing sped up.

"What's going on here?" I heard a strangely familiar voice, and I slowed again, and another blow hit my shoulder again.

"Stop!" I shouted. I grew frantic, since I faced the light, I could only see his silhouette while he could see me. Being weaponless and grid-garmentless at the time[I had left it in Besaid with Yuna— Ironically telling her I wouldn't run in to trouble.], added to my tired, slow state, I was in no position to fight back.

"Fair game my friend!" Reo called, laughing maniacally. I heard another chopper/bike come to a stop and the sound of someone pacing towards the scene quickly. By now, He'd hit me on the head twice and on my legs multiple times. Everything seemed to be moving slowly, but I could make out the familiarly voiced man making his way over to us.

"You asshole." Was all the man uttered before pulling out a gun and holding it to Reo's head.

My night had turned from uneventful to terrifying in no time at all.

"D-Dude! Take her! I'm not gonna get myself killed over some worthless chick!" He exclaimed, letting go of me, and stumbled over to his gang. They all mounted their bikes and in a frenzied panic, drove off in the opposite direction, the man's gun still pointed at them. Though they were retreating, the man who now stood next to me shot a bullet that easily found the tire one of the bikes, forcing him to crash down frightfully.

I looked up, my vision practically completely gone, and the last thing I could make out was blonde hair and an eye patch before everything went black.

I woke up in a large bed the next morning, my head and overall frame aching. All I could remember was getting the crap beaten out of me.

I forced my body up, a muffled moan coming from my throat as a searing pain reverberated through out my body.

"You awake, kid?" I sighed and made an effort to turn my head. What I saw forced out a moan.

Gippal stood in front of me in gray slacks, the kind that don't bunch up at the ankle, and a beater that was wiped with grease. He had a brace wrapped around her right elbow and a mixture of grease and sweat covered his stubbled face. He was wiping his oversized hands on a rag and strutting over to me. I smiled when I realized he was actually wearing the pair of fuzzy bunny slippers I'd bought him last year for his birthday as I joke.

"I'm only a year younger than you." I said quietly. It hurt to speak I noticed. I didn't specifically remember being hit in the throat, but since my entire body was riddled with bruises, I was doubtful that I probably hadn't been.

"Good to see you've retained your oh so joyful attitude." He muttered sourly.

"Good to know you seem so happy." I countered his sarcasm with my own, smiling to add a cruel twist.

"You realize how lucky you are that I saw what was happening when I did?" He asked, crossing his toned arms and raising an eyebrow.

"You sound like my daddy. Stop it." I whined. Though when I tried to pout, my face seemed to go numb in pain. I slowly moved a brown spotted arm up to my face to feel a lump sitting on my lower jaw, making my expression even more dismal.

"What happened to beating Vegnagun? Hell, Rikku, that guy was beating the shit out of you and all you were doing was yelping. I would've ignored it but I recognized your voice— And you owe it to me that I did." He scoffed, roughly taking the pillows off the bed and fluffing them. He placed them behind me and I slumped back, gladly greeted with no pain. My back was untouched.

"Look, okay, thank you. I owe you." I complied, blinking and looking at my bandaged fingers. I noticed a bandage was wrapped tightly and clumsily around my palm. On the center of the bandage, a little frowny face was drawn in marker.

"You do. I even gave up my bed for you. Jeez, I really do pamper my guests." He complained, sighing and trudging off. I looked around the room, to realize I was actually laying in Gippal's four poster. The room was covered in schematics, books, parts and tools. A couple bottles of beer lay here and there and I could see the soft purple color poking up from underneath other garments I knew it was his sweater that he adored. Though it wasn't a manly color, Lavender reminded Gippal of his mother, Lelea, and in his eyes that was enough of a reason to cherish it.

I looked down, noting my clothes had been changed, and as I thought about it, a blush more red than scarlet spread over my face. I could feel the tips of my ears growing progressively warmer.

"Did you...?" I blinked, pulling limply at the large white t-shirt that was all I had covering me.

"Ah, yeah. I did. I've seen you naked before. Whatever." He shrugged it off, making a path to the bathroom by shoving things here and there with his foot, "I'm going to warm up some water for a bath— It should make you feel better. Then you are going to tell me why you were on Mi'Hen." He said, entering the bathroom.

"But—" I tried to raise my voice, but the bruises started to ache as I attempted anything about a bare whisper. I sighed and settled back against the pillows.

It was true Gippal had seen me... "Revealed", you could say. Though I didn't like to admit it, we were in live in our teens and back then you did ridiculous things. Including skinny dipping in the oasis. Not something I hold in high merit.

I could hear the water being turned on. The sound as it collided with the bottom of the more than likely foul colored bath tub was oddly relaxing.

"You are cool with being carried, right? It might hurt a little 'cause of the bruises." I heard him say from the bathroom over the rushing water.

"Yeah, it's fine. I can take a little pain. I owe you, like I said," I said, my throat throbbed again, "though I hate owing you..." Muttering the last part, I scanned the room again, surprised to see a picture of me and my mother near the other door, probably leading to the room that connected Gippal's home to the Faction.

Gippal sat on the toilet seat as he used the shower nozzle to clean out the tub of grime and grease, though he doubted Rikku cared much. She endorsed machine oil baths— He's watched her take one when they were kids and she acted like it was actually pretty nice.

After about a minute, the tub seemed pretty much white again, and he started up the actual bath. As it filled, he organized the sink top and grabbed a decently clean towel from the cabinet above the toilet and draped it over the toilet seat.

He made sure the water was hot before watching it fill up the rest of the way. He then shut off the water, and left the room to get the girl he had grown up with, and when he was six years old, had vowed to marry.

"Bath's ready." He said quietly. To him, I must have looked transfixed because he shook me before removing the warm comforter and scooping me up. I bit my cheek to keep from groaning in his face. He waltzed in to the bathroom and put me directly in to the tub. I let out a cry as the searingly hot fluid touched my back, and then as it seemed to consume me whole. I looked down at the t-shirt as some of the residue from the grease stains floated around and seemed to hover in the water.

"Thank you." Was all I could say, but when I looked up, all I could see was the door shutting. When I peered around the room, the only trace of him I could see were the fuzzy pink slippers he'd been wearing, lying next to the tub, and his loved purple sweater next to them.

**[CHAPTER EXECUTED]**

**Like the "EXECUTED"part? I did. :D**

**So yeah. Hopefully not to fast— I wrote it in one go, so I hope to see some reviews on how awesome it was.**

**...Because I really want it to be awesome. **

**If by chance you do like it, I'm sorry to say updates will be irregular. My schedule fluctuates and with my schedule I don't have much open time till Monday, and I always get a tonna homework on Monday.**

**So pleeze review. :D I refuse to update unless I get... At least 7 reviews per chapter. Criticism and compliments only, please. I'd like to know what I'm good at and what needs improving.**

**EDIT: I had a lot of grammatical errors I fixed. I tried to anyway. xD**

**Arigatou~ Poi!**


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